Google AI search expands to five Southeast Asian languages

Google’s AI search now answers in Filipino, Indonesian, Malay, Thai and Vietnamese, signaling a broader shift in how people in Southeast Asia discover information and products online. Seotal’s review says AI assistants are already major traffic sources, while marketplaces still lead product discovery in the region.

Why it matters: - AI search is no longer an English-only channel in key Southeast Asian markets. - Businesses now have to optimize for local-language answers, not just blue-link rankings. - Product discovery in the region is spreading across search engines, AI assistants and marketplaces, changing how consumers find brands.

What happened: - Google’s AI Mode help page, viewed on September 13, 2026, lists Filipino, Indonesian, Malay, Thai and Vietnamese among supported languages. - The same help page names Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines among supported locations. - Seotal reviewed Google documentation, Similarweb traffic rankings, Statcounter referral data and two consumer surveys to assess AI SEO in six Southeast Asian markets. - The review highlights three shifts: local-language AI answers are live, AI assistants have become major web destinations, and product discovery often starts outside search engines.

The details: - Google named Indonesian when AI Overviews expanded to more than 100 countries in October 2024. - AI Mode added Indonesian on September 8, 2025. - Google’s help page lists Gemini 3 Pro as the model in AI Mode. - Interactive charts in AI Mode remain English only. - The e-Conomy SEA 2025 report by Google, Temasek and Bain and Company cites Google data showing queries 2 to 3 times the length of traditional searches in May 2025. - The same report says visual search was growing 70% a year as of July 2025. - On Similarweb’s country rankings for August 2026, chatgpt.com was the 4th most visited website in Indonesia and Singapore. - chatgpt.com ranked ahead of facebook.com in both countries. - gemini.google.com ranked between 9th and 13th in all six countries in August 2026. - gemini.google.com had been outside the top 20 in every one of the six countries from June to August 2025. - perplexity.ai remained outside the top 50 in all six countries. - Statcounter shows ChatGPT sent 86.13% of AI chatbot referrals to websites in Indonesia in August 2026. - Microsoft Copilot accounted for 8.27% of referrals in the Philippines in June 2025. - Claude took 5.58% of referrals in Singapore in June 2026, its highest monthly share in any of the six countries. - A July 2026 report by impact.com, Cube Asia and dentsu, based on 2,400 consumers across the six markets, found 71% discover new products on online marketplaces. - The same report found 57% discover products through search engines and 24% use generative AI in their shopping journey, as reported by ITBrief Asia. - A Google and Milieu survey of 7,200 consumers across ASEAN in September 2025 found 75% said AI chatbots, translators and image search helped them discover content. - The same survey found 62% said AI features such as personalized recommendations influenced a purchase. - Seotal co-founder Ali said search work in Southeast Asia now has to cover the answer as well as the ranking, in Thai, Vietnamese and Bahasa Indonesia as well as English. - Ali said local-language pages, marketplace listings and structured data should sit in the same plan as Google rankings. - Seotal says the data shows discovery spreading across all three channels.

Between the lines: - The rise of AI Mode in local languages gives brands a new place to appear, but also raises the bar for content structure and localization. - Strong traffic to ChatGPT and Gemini shows that AI assistants are becoming part of everyday web behavior, not just experimental tools. - Marketplaces still dominate product discovery, which means SEO strategies in Southeast Asia now need to stretch beyond search engines into commerce platforms. - The fact that newest AI Mode features remain English only suggests the regional rollout is still uneven even as language support expands.

What's next: - Brands in Southeast Asia are likely to keep shifting budgets toward local-language content, marketplace optimization and structured data. - Google’s AI search features may continue expanding, but feature parity across languages appears to lag behind basic language support. - AI referral traffic should remain concentrated among a few major assistants unless local usage patterns change.

The bottom line: - In Southeast Asia, AI SEO is becoming a three-channel game: search engines, AI assistants and marketplaces.